Campos tries to save University Mound Ladies Home

In a last-ditch effort to preserve one of the city’s oldest elder care facilities, Supervisor David Campos unveiled legislation Tuesday that would temporarily prevent the University Mound Ladies Home from being used in any other way — and, he hopes, stall plans for its sale.

Last month, the home’s board signed a contract to sell the Excelsior district property to a nearby private elementary school. The sale — scheduled to close July 31 — would mean shuttering the 130-year-old home for elderly women of modest means and require the relocation of its 27 remaining residents.

Campos and other City Hall leaders have been working to figure out a way to maintain the home and have threatened to file a lawsuit. In the meantime, Campos said, he hopes the proposal to create an “interim zoning moratorium” — which would prevent the property from being used as anything but a residential facility for 45 days, and then could be extended to 10 months, then 2 years — will put the brakes on the sale and residents’ displacement.

“It is a stop-gap measure,” Campos said Tuesday. “But I think that the hope here is to provide this institution an opportunity to continue to serve its mission. … What we hope it will accomplish is for (the board) to understand that the right outcome is for them to work with the city and find a long-term, neighborhood solution.”

The measure would need nine votes at the 11-member Board of Supervisors to pass. It will be taken up next week and face a final vote July 29 before being sent to the mayor for consideration.